by Danie Ware
Though, in fairness, he did have certain advantages.
Coughing gouts of scarlet, Scythe pushed himself to his elbows and tried to kneel. Rhan placed a boot between his shoulders and flattened him, hard, back down to his belly. Decisive action removed Rhan’s confusion, made him feel focused and stronger – not something he wanted to think about too closely.
“Scythe,” Rhan said. How many times had Scythe picked him up from this very floor? Stepped over him as he lay upon it? He snorted. “You of all people know who and what I am, what I can do to you. You know that spitting blood and defiance is both charming and pointless.” His voice was flat. “I must help this city. And to do so, I must know everything that Phylos intended, everything he hoarded, and where, and what he intended to do with that hoard. What plans he had to face the blight, and whether he understood its origin or solution. I need to know if he planned its cause, or its cure. And you’re going to tell me.”
Scythe made a noise, inarticulate, but its meaning clear. Rhan removed his boot, stepped back and crouched, looking at the broken figure of his one-time friend. He grabbed a handful of the young man’s hair, pulled his chin up.
“You attended his meetings, his guests, his ritual gutting of my home.” It was a statement; he didn’t need an answer to that one. “I want his plans for the city. For the food-tithes of the manors; for the terhnwood crop he hoarded; for uniting the army. For what he would do after Vahl rose.” Scythe sneered, spat. “He had a plan, Scythe. What was it? What was supposed to happen next?”
Scythe lifted his head high enough to meet Rhan’s gaze with a look that promised a back-alley murder. Rhan chuckled.
“Are you familiar, Scythe, with one of the Gods’ oldest rules? It’s very straightforward – it’s why apothecaries train with weapons, why the Elementalists of old were called ‘Priests of the People’. Simply? There’s balance in all things – the Powerflux energy flows, soul to soul, it gives us day and night, and summer and winter. And it gives us the poled opposites of ‘Heal and Harm’ – none may learn one without learning the other. Am I boring you?” He crouched closer, taking a firmer grip. “Perhaps a demonstration. This, my old friend, would be ‘harm’.”
With a swift, vicious motion, he slammed Scythe’s already bloody face into the rug, hard enough to hit the floor beneath, to crack his nose, the sound sharp and audible. Scythe swore, bubbled muffled hate and pain.
“Must do something about this rug,” Rhan muttered. “Good thing it wasn’t actually mine.”
Still holding Scythe’s hair, he leaned forward to speak almost in his ear. “Now,” he said. “Just in case you’ve forgotten…”
He placed his other hand on the young man’s broken face, felt the warmth of his blood and pain, his mortal life. In a moment Rhan could call a whole world of power, that massive elemental force, to his fingertips, could close himself away from the three unfamiliar elements and attune himself to the one that mattered – to the OrSil, the sunken Soul of Light. As he’d thrown down Phylos, defeated Vahl, and healed Mael, so now he could access just the faintest glimmer of that strength and insight.
And he could touch it to the pulse of elements that ran through the mortal body.
Change them.
Under his fingers, Scythe’s face healed, bone and bruise and break. In its place, an odd red lightning mark jagged through his skin. After a moment of fearful, stock-still rigidity as he felt the flow of light and power, Scythe began to shake with a real terror.
“What… what are you doing? What are you—?”
“Healing you,” Rhan said, still conversational but sharp as an edge of bone. “It’s not mercy, it’s to make you think through its implications.” As an element, light could be cruel and garish and raw; it could reach into the darkest places of a man’s soul, confront him with his own figments. “Not only can I heal you so that I can torture you all over again, but also…” He moved his hand, sat back on his heels. “Scythe, think about what I am. When I ask you a question, you’ll answer it. You’ll answer every question I have, or by the hairy balls of Samiel himself, I’ll beat you to a bloody death, pour life back into your poor broken body, and then I’ll do it again. Any fool can torture you to death. I can do so repeatedly. Now. Tell me about Phylos.”
For a moment, Scythe looked at him, blinking almost as if he was measuring his chances – wondering if Rhan was calling his bluff. Then he sagged and lowered his head, rested it for a moment on the bloody rug.
He muttered, “This isn’t finished. You bloody bastard. Somehow, somehow, I’ll get you back for all of this, for everything you’ve done. To me, to the city you’ve damned.”
“I don’t know what Phylos told you,” Rhan said. “But he offered more shit than the paddocks on market day. I’m trying to save Fhaveon, save the Varchinde entire. I swear on the love of Calarinde herself, I’m not… not…” His words faltered, ran aground.
Vahl was laughing at him.
Am I the daemon, Rhan?
Scythe lifted his head, stared at Rhan for a moment. The red mark on his skin burned like a scar. When he started to speak, the words fell from his mouth and flooded through the room as if to drown them both in some grey sea of horror, as if the world’s very ending would take place as they huddled here, listening to the rage.
And slowly, Rhan began to understand the sheer vastness of what Vahl had planned.
3: NIVROTAR’S GAMBLE
AMOS
Nivrotar’s audience hall was empty.
Weary of her performers, philosophers and sycophants, the Lord of Amos had set them a new task – to discover the source of the blight. Amos was an ancient city steeped in lore; if anywhere held understanding, it was here.
Without them, the hall was a suggestion of shadow, the silence as bleak as the winter chill.
Behind the great seat, her stone aperios spread black wings, its beak turned as if it watched the door from one sharp eye. But the steps below it now led down to a bare, cold floor, shining inlays clear of both feet and despair.
Only one pair of boots rested on that floor. Soft-soled, laced tight, blacker than the aperios itself, they rose into narrow, many-pocketed trews, and a long, lean figure, face mostly hidden. A figure as taut as a throne-room assassin.
The Bard, Roderick of Avesyr, stood unspeaking, his stance cold and his gaze flat, showing nothing of his thoughts. When the sharp boom of a knock came upon the great doors, he did not react, and as they parted and a chink of rocklight spread to an arc across the gleaming floor, he neither spoke nor moved.
The Lord of Amos herself watched the doors open, her head to one side like a girl’s. She sat on the bottom step of the huge seat as if she were somehow unworthy, the child of its rightful occupant. Her face was pale and unadorned, her hair a tight blue-black braid. Chin in one flawless hand, she watched the long shadows in that arc of light, shadows that stretched from silhouettes, hesitant and small in the doorway.
On the other side of Nivrotar’s seat was another pair of feet, now jumping back to avoid the spreading illumination. They were small feet, agile and swift, covered in locally crafted soft shoes that fit poorly.
The arc grew wider as the doors swung wide, letting in the cold of the archway outside.
“Jeez, shut the fuckin’ doors willya?” Quelling an urge to scuff his toes against the elaborate shining inlay, Ecko stood in the open, sore thumb visible in his stupid new clothes, his shirt and trews both too big for him and clumsily fitted. The fabric was coarse and itchy, loose at his back and ankles; it was gonna drive him batshit before too much longer.
Yeah, so this is what I’ve sunk to. Rodders goes to London an’ gets cool-dude-street-assassin; I stay the fuck here an’ get a wool sack an’ pants made outta hair…
Not that long ago Ecko would’ve been the assassin, maybe up there on the shadowed balcony or spider clung to the wall. Now he was stuck out here like some lost kid because he’d left his stealth-cloak in Aeona; because he had a long pink scar down hi
s chest; because he was wearing a fucking shirt; because he couldn’t trust himself to remain hidden, for fucksake, against a background of black stone…
Yeah, I know what you’re doin’. Psyche 101. Still peelin’ back the layers of defences, makin’ me face the truth or find my core self or whatever the hell it is…
Hell, he might’ve capitulated in the face of Triqueta’s rescue and Roderick’s return – he might’ve agreed to play along the game-path of this reality, to be good and save the world and go to bed early and all that hero shit, but he was fucking damned if he was giving up his attitude. Changing his choice was one thing, but changing himself? She knew what she could do with that shit…
You still hearin’ me, Eliza? Runnin’ my program? Tickin’ your li’l boxes? Checkin’ to see I’m bein’ a good li’l minion now? Jus’ cos I’m playin’ ball, don’t think I’m gonna roll over…
Chances of successful scenario at…
If the peeling layers was a thing, she hadn’t even gotten close. Ecko still had shit he wasn’t gonna give up – the stuff Mom’d given him, the stuff he’d sold his soul and sanity for. His enhanced adrenaline spiked, making his skin shiver; his ocular telescopics spun almost without him thinking… and he was watching the figures as they came into the hall.
Triqueta, muddied and wide-eyed; Amethea, pale and tired and spattered with gore.
Between them, they bore some sort of stretcher, some sort of…
His reflexive sarcasm screeched to an unruly halt, leaving tire-scars.
What the fuck?
Beside him, Nivrotar came slowly to her feet, her girlish aspect gone. She said nothing, only pointed to bring the stretcher to the floor before her.
Amethea and Triqueta exchanged a glance. Ecko watched them as they both looked at the Bard.
His adrenaline dumped so hard he nearly chucked his lunch.
Oh this so can’t be good…
The outside guard closed the door, and a draught of nervousness skittered across the empty stone. Nivrotar took a final step down to the floor, her feet bare and white. Even as she moved, Ecko’s mind was reeling. He had a sense of impending doom the size of your average Balrog.
Hell, whaddaya know, I jus’ learned premonition.
Plus five. Helluva download.
Triqueta and Amethea laid the stretcher down, then they both backed right up as if the Lord would blow them into the middle of next week.
Trembling with tension, nauseous with the unused adrenaline, Ecko crouched tight by the side of the steps – though, in the kit he had on, that was gonna do him fuck all good. He spun his telos again, his brain making silent wagers…
It’s a clue, it’s a key. It’s the McGuffin who’s gonna gasp three words about where the bad guys’re at, then croak right here on the floor…
But when one of Nivrotar’s long white hands pulled back the covering, he saw who it was.
And he stopped.
Holy shit.
In that split-second of recognition, of pure, cold shock, his heart rate hammered protest. He was blinking fire, swallowing sand. Hers had been the very first voice he’d heard; she’d been there, the heart of The Wanderer, right from the start…
His oculars flatlined, refused to work – he couldn’t process what he was seeing. His eyes were blinking, blinking.
Shit!
But another’s reaction was far, far stronger.
And Ecko realised with some loopy, detached clarity that it hadn’t been Nivrotar that the two women had backed away from.
“No.”
The Bard’s voice was soft, like the first tremble of the coming tsunami.
As he moved, even the city’s Lord gave him ground.
“No…”
Again, that reflexive denial – always, always the first reaction to death, like it would make some fucking difference. The potence of it shivered in the still air of the great hall, made shudders of the dust. Ecko had the creepiest feeling that if Roderick wanted, he could shatter the windows like an opera singer, bring the whole stone ceiling down in body-splatting chunks…
Jesus Harry Christ. I know you got some London tech, dude, but what the hell…?
For his life, though, he could not have moved.
“No…”
Louder this time, more a strike than a shiver. Roderick dropped to his knees by the stretcher, his long hands pulling the coverings away so he could see what had happened. He touched his fingers to her shrunken face, her thin shoulders, gently – as if he were afraid to hurt her, to wake her, afraid for her to be real.
Hellfire and fucking damnation. What’s this, rise of the living dead, now? Zombie apocalypse time?
But even Ecko’s savage humour was subdued; he said nothing aloud. He watched, his own denial still shouting at him, raw. Karine had been too vital, too real – too recent. This was all batshit, it had to be…
“No.”
The fourth time. It was a statement, the Bard’s voice still soft but gathering strength. He looked for a moment like he was going to pick the girl up, hold her to him and howl, but she was wasted and tiny, too fragile. Instead, he sat back on his heels – on his black London Converse – and looked at his shaking hands, touched them to his own face, the scarf across his jaw, as if to reassure himself it was still there.
Okay. Here we go…
But there was no roof-reaving bawl of doom. Instead, the Bard stayed like that for a moment – like he was some fucking bomb about to take out the building and all of them with it – and then he came to his feet in a single, marionette motion.
His back was straight, his face now uncovered, revealing the seething, sensual, mechanical mess of his throat, and the blacklight veins that ran up and into his ears like maggots.
For just a moment, the entire room watched him as if he would bring death to them all.
“So.” His voice was a low rumble like a distant train. The hall thrummed with tension and acoustic. “This is our message, is it?”
What?
“That’s it?” Ecko’s words were out before he could stop them – their harsh rasp was a slap. All heads snapped to look at him. Uncomfortable under that many eyes, he sprang up the side of the steps and curled his lip, exposed black teeth. Grief manifested as anger, and he threw it back. His skin shifted with the shadows of the great hall. “Chrissakes, what the hell happened to you? Karine was like, I dunno, your fucking kid, your daughter. Jeez, thought I was fucked up—”
“Quiet.” Roderick’s look should have flayed skin from bone. He looked back down at the pitifully aged woman. “The time for riddles is past. Tell me, where did this come from?”
“She, where did she come from.” Ecko’s adrenaline was still singing along his nerves. He found himself halfway over the seat itself, staring down at the Bard, incredulous. “Chrissakes, I’m the sane one now? What the hell did Mom do to you?”
While you were screaming.
Down there in the dark.
Heat pulsed through the Bard’s throat like tension. He didn’t answer.
But Ecko had found his voice now, his release. The words were a torrent of force, catharsis and fury, and he couldn’t hold them back. He crouched in the Lord’s seat, an old embroidered cushion under his shoes, and aimed himself at the Bard’s black hood.
“What the hell’s goin’ on here, anyhow? You come back from Mom’s lair and – bam! – you’re the supernasty? You got the black hat? You’re the one with all the tech, now?” The word was an accusation – he was being childish and he knew it, but he didn’t fucking care. “One day-trip ticket to the London Underground, two rounds with Mom’s operating table, and hey whaddaya know, you’re a new man!”
The strike was casual, a backhand slap. But it was so quick that, even adrenalised as he was, even with his targetters tracking, the Bard’s fingers caught him. The impact didn’t hurt, but the sound rang, inside and out, smarting. And the fact that it’d made contact at all…
Ecko spat outrage. “You fucking dare�
�!”
“I said, quiet.”
“Fuck you.”
“Enough!” Nivrotar’s voice rang from the dark vaults of the roof. Like children they subsided, glaring.
Cold as winter wind, she said, “There is no combat in my presence without my word. I see grief, I see envy – I understand. But these things will not be aired in here.” She added no threat, no warning of punishment or consequence – she had no need to. Instead she came to stand by Karine, the light making hollows of her perfect white cheeks. She turned to look back up at them. “We must understand this. Control yourselves, all of you, and tell me how this… atrocity… came to occur in my city.”
“Outta my ass.” Ecko’s snipe was not aimed at anyone in particular.
“This is no jest.” The Lord’s voice was calm; she looked from one face to another. “Only the Kas – or those crafted from them – drain time.” She cocked an eyebrow at Roderick. “Vahl may be gone, but the Varchinde is in pieces, the cities in turmoil. Blight eats our crops and we know not its source. Fhaveon lies gutless and ruined, the Council is broken. And if there are creatures of this ability within my city walls, should I just part my thighs and let them ravage me?” The sentence was delivered without a flicker of humour or vulnerability. “How comes this discovery? If Vahl lives again, if his craftings walk the streets of Amos, then I will know.”
Amethea shook her head, her denial deeper than just disbelief. She was grey-pale, like ash, her body temperature too low; sheer bloody-mindedness was keeping her on her feet.
She said, “Karine was with me yesterday, yesterday morning. She went to secure supplies, herbs, food – she was helping. No one haggles like Karine.” Her smile was brief, sad. “Couple of guards brought her back. I tried…” her voice cracked and she looked up at the Lord of Amos, blinking “…I tried to understand, I really tried. But how – where – no one knew. The bazaar was heaving, no one saw a thing.”
